Why American Prisons
Fail:
How to Fix Them without
Spending More Money
(Maybe Less)
Peyton Paxson and George H. Watson
Chapter 1
Mass Incarceration
Why American Prisons Fail
Copyright © 2015 Carolina Academic Press. All rights reserved.
Mass Incarceration Began in the
U.S.
in the 1970s
Copyright © 2015 Carolina Academic Press. All rights reserved.
Causes of Mass Incarceration
▪ Highly politicized criminal justice system
▪ Baby Boom—large group of young people, who are the
most likely to commit crimes
▪ “Nothing works”—Federal Bureau of Prisons and many
states gave up on rehabilitation
▪ War on Drugs—Nixon and Reagan administrations
focused on drug dealers and drug users
▪ Mandatory minimums—politically popular effort by
legislatures to take away sentencing discretion from
judges and juries
▪ “Get Tough” movement—longer sentences, less prison
programming
Copyright © 2015 Carolina Academic Press. All rights reserved.
Copyright © 2015 Carolina Academic Press. All rights reserved.
The Baby Boom Contributed to
the Rise
in Crime in the 1960s and 1970s
Copyright © 2015 Carolina Academic Press. All rights reserved.
Violent Crimes Peaked in the Early
1990s
Copyright © 2015 Carolina Academic Press. All rights reserved.
Violent Crimes Peaked in the Early
1990s
Copyright © 2015 Carolina Academic Press. All rights reserved.
Violent Crimes Increased
Dramatically
in the 1960s
Copyright © 2015 Carolina Academic Press. All rights reserved.
Property Crimes also Increased
Dramatically in the 1960s
Copyright © 2015 Carolina Academic Press. All rights reserved.
Drug Arrests Increased in Most
Years
from 1981
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